Cooking My Way to the Finish

 Sujata Massey

Williamsport, PA, Nov 5

So, Nov 5 came and went. Even though I am writing this the evening of the election, I expected that not all states will have certified results by the morning after,  just as it happened in 2020. 

 

I know that delayed news is better to me than outright bad news. UPDATE: I woke up to the news that Trump won. And I'm so very disappointed.

 

We all have to live with anxiety and uncertainty—no matter which side of the political spectrum we are on. And I suspect a lot of us have suffered very serious uncertainty in our lives; for instance, worrying about someone in the military, or someone seriously ill. I tend to worry more about others than myself, and I don’t know whether this is a good or bad thing. 

 

As with regard to worrying, It's taken decades for to understand that worrying won’t stop anything from happening, good or bad. 

 

Leading up to this election, many of us who cared did the best we could. I tend to throw myself into doing things outside the house when I’m anxious about something I can't control. Therefore, I became a campaign volunteer on weekends. I canvassed for voters, which meant going door to door to talk with people, if they are willing, and leaving campaign literature. On Tuesday, I drove to a central Pennsylvania mountain town, Williamsport, to help with whatever they needed. Turned out it was doorknocking—in my mind, I had thought I might be a driver to polling places. This was simple and straightforward work, and I appreciated how the addresses were easy to find in this old-fashioned industrial town.  I did not find many folks at home—except for children, who had the day of because of the election.

Of all the volunteer shifts I've had, this one was the quietest with the fewest volunteers, and I was aware it was in a county that would very likely give the majority of votes to Donald Trump. The volunteer headquarters, which was in an interesting old factory building that at one time manufactured more pajamas than any other place on earth. Now it is mostly space for community and artists. Just a few days earlier, strangers had come by and noticed a truck with Harris Walz stickers parked outside the Pajama Factory. The people spray-painted obscenities about Kamala Harris on the truck and then set it ablaze. I heard it from the skeleton crew of volunteers in the building, hoping for the best. And when I traveled through the neighborhoods, seeing the number of people who hadn't yet voted, I had a very sad feeling that they wouldn't go.

 

The sun set and I put an audiobook on to play through the speakers of my car. I drove home along the small highways to Baltimore, just two-and-a-half hours to my destiny of waiting safely at home with unsafe emotions. As I mentioned, being at home has not felt relaxing lately. As a result, I haven’t cooked much and the fridge is almost bare. Recently Tony had left in the snack drawer a half-bag of kettle chips, carefully sealed with a clip. He came asking me later if I knew where the bag was, and I had to admit that I’d eaten it all. 

 

We are often lectured that eating in times of stress is an unhealthy habit, but I think it’s a lot better than some other ways of coping with unease. We all have our strategies.

Stuffed Shells at my Baltimore House, Nov 5

 

I'v had the feeling since Monday that I wanted a few casseroles in the house for emotional protection. I knew I wanted something I hadn’t made in a year or two: a rich, saucy lasagna. I pictured a large baking dish filled with a casserole of cheese, tomato, pasta and spinach. The kind my mother made. A large amount that would create leftovers that I would be able to reheat and eat to my heart’s content, yes, maybe with a little salad on the side, and maybe dessert.

 

I realized that nobody had the time to make this dream lasagna for me. So, on Monday, I tried to buy ingredients at my local store. Unbelievably, there were no boxes of the flat, wide strip noodles used for lasagna. It made me wonder if others are going through the same kind of cravings.  I've always thought that ricotta-and-spinach stuffed pasta shells are practically the same. he large shell noodles, conchiglie, were on the shelf, so I grabbed them.

At home I just parboiled the noodles, filled them with a mix of lightly sauteed spinach (1 box defrosted from frozen) and enough ricotta, parmesan and provolone cheese to suit my taste. Half of the cheese mixture was suitable for me (vegan or low-lactose cheeses) and the other half was bring-it-on full fat ricotta for Tony and Neel. 

I made a happy arrangement of conchiglie in an 11x9 ceramic baking pan with a little tomato sauce on the bottom. Over that I poured about 3 cups of sauce (one cup chunky homemade and two cups good quality marinara. Then I covered the casserole and put it in the fridge for election night.  And when I got home from Pennsylvania a few hours ago, weary from the driving, I opened the door and smelled tomato, onion and cheese.

 

Having a hot dish waiting at home for me, during the difficult time I'm waiting for news, made me feel a little more comforted. And the very act of cooking good things strikes me as an act of faith. It means that I can take care of my own needs and sustain myself to go on, no matter who is in charge of the country. 

... Because I Can't Pantster a Cardigan!

Ovidia--every other Tuesday

I've pretty much finished the cardigan I was knitting as I worked on the last book. I like to have a craft project running alongside the 'big' writing projects because there are times, in the middle of these six to eight month writing periods, when I find my brain and eyes are too tired to read or watch anything but at the same time I'm too wound up to sleep or relax.

So that's when I knit...

Knitting is something I can do with my eyes shut, but requires just enough attention that I stop thinking about how differently I should have done the day's writing!
The bulk of the big pieces (back, left & right fronts, sleeves) got finished around the same time as I submitted the Rose Apple Tree draft.
And yesterday I did the button band--

I should be able to finish the buttonhole band tonight, then all that remains will be to assemble all the pieces--which should be a pretty straightforward process. It'll still take time and careful positioning and stitching, but it should be 'easy'.

Which was pretty much how I wanted to work my NaNoWriMo project (which I still haven't started yet).

I had some difficulties with logging into the site but that's just an excuse because I'm having more difficulties with putting together the ideas I've had.

I'd intended to 'pantster' this project as an exercise over November. It's not how I normally write, but so many people say that's the only way they can write, and I wanted to see how it worked. Also, because I always have so many ideas I want to explore, I thought I could just braindump and get 50,000 words towards the next project.

Only I'm having trouble figuring how to link up all the ideas I have!

Frankly, it's a mess!

What I'm ending up with is kind of how my knitting projects would turn out if I just started knitting to try out new stitch patterns or new needles (which has happened--I love the bamboo needles I got in Bristol last Crimefest and have been trying them out) but these little sample stitch things don't add up to anything usable any more than my 'great' ideas are adding up to the next book.

So I'm stepping back to try to work things out. Which is also why I'm knitting even when I'm not tired now!

Right now I feel like I can't immerse myself into any other projects because the Rose Apple comments/ feedback/ edits will need to be attended to as soon as they come in. Which I'm kind of looking forward to doing!
Overall, my November is a great place to be in, with the bulk of the year's writing done and new project ideas to play around with!

With the book deadline met, I'm using also using this time to reset and reboot and catch up on my reading.

Which is why I've finally had time to read Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus and I really really LOVE it! I hear it's been filmed but I'm not sure if I want to watch the show given how much I love the book.
(I've been visualising Calvin and Elizabeth as a litarary versions of Sheldon and Amy from the Big Bang Theory so part of me is afraid of being disappointed, no matter how good the film version is)

And I've gone back to attending weekly pilates and yoga sessions and doing yoga at home as well as swimming and walking on the other days, so I'm feeling really good.

Also, the Singapore Writers Festival starts this weekend. I'm not speaking, meaning I can enjoy it and I'm looking forward to it without dread this year!

I hope everyone else is having a peaceful, productive and wonderful November too--however the American elections turn out. Oh--and I just want to mention something a visitor said (not sure if she was joking) about Lee Hsien Yang seeking asylum in the UK--
'He's kind of like your Prince Harry, isn't he--'
I think that's the best way I've heard it put so far!

Anyway, we wish him well (without mentioning the property assets he still owns here while claiming to be broke) and hope he turns out better than Amos Yee, that other asylum seeker who ended up (in prison) in America!

Happy November everybody!

America the Beautiful

 Annamaria on Monday 

"Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove."

Most of you will recognize the words from Shakespeare's Sonnet 116.  I offer them as an explanation, both to myself and to all of you, to explain why I am loving my country so deeply at this dire moment.

Typically, my feelings of patriotism are strongest for my City of New York.  I regularly walk around feeling great about the place where I live.  But today I am filled with love for the USA, for what it has always stood for to me.

I am the grandchild of four immigrants from Italy, including my maternal grandmother who arrived at age three in the arms of her parents.  My grandparents  were all profoundly grateful for the new start America gave them.  They raised their children to love the USA.  Their sons (eight in total) all volunteered to fight for the USA in WWII.

My mother's brother and my godfather. John Pisacane-

who fought in Patton's Army in Sicily and Anzio and

was killed during the push to Berlin.

I love my country despite its flaws.  My love is for America, the only functioning democracy created after an armed revolution against a tyrant.  All the others pretty quickly turned into a bloodbath or a dictatorship or both.  Think of the others--the French, the Russia, the Cuban, the Chinese...

My sacred document is the United States Constitution. 

My love is for the America that is, at this moment, trying to become a better functioning multicultural, multiracial, multi-religious, multi-everything democracy--the only one on the planet.

Sound impossible?  Not to me.

My beautiful City of New York already functions that way.  500 languages are spoken here.  The hands holding onto the poles on the subway are in all the colors human skin comes in.  We live and let live. But if a person falls down, the people nearby converge to help, regardless of social background or sexual preference of the person who fell.  And then the concerned fellow New Yorkers disappear into the crowd when help is no longer needed.

I want to shout at the rest of the country: "BE LIKE US." 

At this point in time, the rest of the country is fighting with itself.

Here we are at this critical moment. And what I feel is love.

And I offer this prayer.

Here are the words by Katharine Lee Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College.

I have rearranged sequence, putting the third stanza first, as the brilliant Ray Charles did.  Somehow he saw that the heroes would have to prove themself again at this moment: 

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine!

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

My prayer is for those who are standing up now, as my father and my uncles did.  Today's Americans are at this moment the "heroes proved in liberating strife, who more than self their country love and mercy more than life.

America! America!."

Halloween Isn't Big in Greece, But Costumes Are.

 

Jeff—Saturday

In past years I’ve generally ended my six months in Greece about this time.  My reasoning was simple.  Returning to New York City on Halloween meant that many of the same characters I’d grown used to seeing on Mykonos would be out in force on the streets of Manhattan.

Besides, I wasn’t missing out on any Greek ghouls or goblins (at least not of the unelected sort), because Halloween is virtually non-existent in Greece, except by expats for their children and some places catering to tourists.  That’s not meant to suggest Greeks don’t like to party in costume—the ancients invented it.  Modern Greeks do it big time during Apokries, a three-week festival preceding Greek Orthodox Lent (think February), also known as Carnival.  I’ve described those festivities of Lent before (It’s Mardi Gras Time in Greece), but today I thought I’d concentrate on the costumes.

As reported a few years back on a website called Hubpages :

Adults dress up and throw parties or frequent the town cafes and bars dressed in masks, wigs and funny, scary or risqué costumes. For example men often dress up as outrageous women with high heels, short skirts, huge inflated false boobs and an overdose of lipstick, blusher and false eyelashes. Others may dress up as priests or wear masks of well known politicians, actors or film characters. They often carry props such as plastic battons, streamers, confetti, tins of foam, whistles and clackers; all adding to the rowdy party atmosphere.

Children - even babies - enjoy the fun too of course... masquerade parties are held in villages and schools for the young ones, who dress up in all manner of costumes from witches and warlocks to telly tubbies and angels.

Masqueraders use their disguises and masks to call anonymously at the houses of friends and neighbours, who try to guess their identities.

Cakes and sweets are offered to the masquerading children on these house calls, or shots of whisky or the local fire water to adults in disguise. This is usually a ploy to entice the masquerader to remove his mask to uncover his identity!

 So similarly there is a kind of trick or treating here in Greek Apokries, but ..... they get to do both. The treat is offered - the sweet, cake or whisky, but is then usually followed by the trick - throwing confetti, streamers or foam all around the house (yes I know it's tame, and just in fun, but you try cleaning up tons of the stuff from your carpet!).

At the end of the three-week period Apokries culminates with the Grand Carnival Parades which are held all across Greece. The largest and most famous of which is held in Patras. There are also large parades held in Athens and in Rethymnon, Crete, amongst many others.

But back in NYC there are other forms of celebration, most famously the 51st annual Greenwich Village Halloween Parade.

But the costume celebration I most favor these days takes place away from the heart of Manhattan, and features a lovely young lady who's halloween haul always amazes me.

May all your goblins remain imaginary ... and unelected.

—Jeff

PS.  For those in the US, don't forget to set your clocks back an hour at 12:01 AM Sunday.

The Lost Weekend

 

The World Acupuncture Conference is a very prestigious event. Like Bouchercon, it moves around but generally stays in the far east.

In 2024, it came to London to a hotel that looked like it was near Windsor. It wasn’t. I’ve never been to Windsor, never seen the castle, but I thought it would be nice to go and witness the long walk which you might remember from the funeral of Queen Elizabeth 2nd. I didn’t get to do any of that.

I do British Medical Acupuncture, the sort of acupuncture that British doctors and physiotherapists use. It’s much more trigger point/dry needling than bathing the feet in lotus leaves and sticking 7 inch needles through the neck type of acupuncture. The acupuncture we do is very medical based and with proven meta data.

The man in charge of BMAS is a ex-army, probably ex-Sandhurst officer, battlefield acupuncture specialist. As you would presume, he has very good posture and is very precise in everything. Events that he runs go like clockwork.

I still don’t understand who was running the international conference. It started off badly for us when the taxi from Heathrow very confidently dropped us off at the Radisson Blu rather than the Radisson Red. So that was a long walk through the industrial wasteland that surrounds Heathrow airport.

                                              

It was an expensive hotel with no breakfast and even less charm. It was a long walk to go anywhere. There was no way out, no where else to go to eat rather than paying half the GDP of the US economy for a tiny bowl of cheesy pasta. Alan set off with a credit card and a sat nav on his phone to get supplies. He hasn’t been seen since.

                                                 

Fuelled by sweeties bought coming through Heathrow, I attended the opening ceremony of the WAC. It was hard to describe but I shall try. Very large hall with some 800 people in it, maybe 10% European. There was a top table facing the stage, white tablecloth and flowers etc. On the stage was a lectern and more flowers. Behind that was a screen. To the left and the right were very big screens reminiscent of a rock concert.

The process went like this. Somebody talked. We had simultaneous translation in our ears. Nobody really said anything apart from how good it was to be here. Orr maybe they did but we didn’t get that translated. But the 12 five minute intro slots of the opening ceremony slowly crept to 2 hours and beyond. Somebody would be introduced. They would stand up at the top table and bow to the audience and then walk to the side of the top table and bow again. While this was going on there was music, the same music used by the Soviet gymnasts in 1972 during the floor exercise. The speaker would then walk on to the stage and there was more bowing, and then they would stand behind the lectern, the music stopped abruptly and the speaker disappeared behind the foliage of the floral display.

At this point they handed over the USB stick to the technical person who then fiddled about with it for another 2 or 3 minutes with all sorts of interesting pieces of their desktop appearing on the screen. Eventually the correct powerpoint presentation would appear. The  top half of it in their native language, the lower half was in English. Or, it might have been, but it wasn’t actually visible to anybody in the audience. I thought the big screens at either side would have shown the presentations also but alas they were showing the faces of the people at the top table as they nodded wisely. From then on it just ran later and later. One of my favourite lecturers in the world was supposed to give a 40 minute lecture on the degranulation of the mast cell. He was told he had 10 minutes.

                                               

After lunch all the lecturers were either Korean or Chinese and there was no translation. So all the Europeans went up to their hotel room to watch Endeavour. And it all cost an awful lot of money.

I think my favourite lecturer was also slightly perturbed at not being able to deliver the lecture that he was supposed to. He’s Scandinavian. He held up his USB stick and said ‘We are not doing this as it takes too long.’ He is a cartoonist as well as a Professor of Medicine, he knows a lot about neuro physiology and uses his cartoons as a teaching method. So with the camera on the lectern, he quickly drew a big brain and wrote underneath it, “the male brain”. Then he drew a very small brain and wrote under that “the female brain”. He said the big male brain was very busy and indicated that ¾ of it was constantly thinking at a very high rate, mostly about women and football. Whereas the female brain worked at a lower, but more consistent rate, putting right all that was wrong with the world.

                                                     

Nobody laughed.

I guess it was lost in translation.

The Boy from Shopton

 Wendall -- every other Thursday

Last week was the 5th anniversary of my father's death, so I thought I would re-post this tribute to him. Miss you, always, Grady.

Until four years ago, Father’s Day was one of my favorite days of the year. My late dad, Grady Thomas, never really liked a fuss, but on Father’s Day, as far as I was concerned, he just had to put up with it. 

 

My dad, the audiologist, monitoring me, which he never did in life.

 

I didn’t get to spend as many of those holidays with him as I wish I had, but I’ll always be grateful I was able to take him out to lunch on Father’s Day the year before he passed away, when these pictures were taken. 

 

Father's Day lunch

Now, the day is bittersweet. I miss his advice, I miss his wit, I miss the smell of Sir Walter Raleigh pipe smoke curling through every room in the house. 

 

This is the look I got when I mentioned one of my hare-brained schemes.

 

My Dad was a natural athlete and a great singer. He was even part of a traveling quartet called the “Gospeleers.” He loved liver and onions. And thunderstorms. 

 

High school football. But baseball was really his game.

 

One of my most vivid memories is sitting on his lap on our screened in porch and hearing the suck of his pipe between claps of thunder. He was never without his pipe, even in his last days, where he snuck out of his medical facility so he could smoke in the parking lot with my brother and sister.

 

Dad with pipe, 1960s

Dad with pipe, 2019

I keep one of those pipes on my desk and wear the silver bracelets engraved with Lost Luggage and Drowned Under he and my step-mother gave me when I published my first two books. 

 

You'll never find me at a reading without these

In many ways, I take after him. I have his squinty eyes, his passion for music, movies, and driving, his need for regular bouts of solitude, and a penchant for “pantsing,” in work and in life.

 

Off to rent Sargent York or Patton, AGAIN

 

One of the last conversations I ever had with him was about fate and opportunity. He grew up the youngest of six on a farm outside Charlotte, N.C., with no running water or electricity, but complete with an outhouse (as a child, he was famous for locking neighbors in and making them sing to get out...). He told me that the whole trajectory of his life, which he thought he would spend as a minor league baseball player or a mechanic, came down to his willingness to veer off course and say yes to random opportunities. 

 

 

This is a kid who would lock someone in an outhouse

I loved how he—the scientist that he was—saw the patterns of the last eighty years which had led him from that outhouse not only to the first college degree in his family, but to a PhD.

 

As kids, we don’t always know about our parents’ accomplishments. And Dad was never one to brag about what he was doing. I don’t think I appreciated the full picture until I was well into my forties. Among other things, he was the first clinical audiologist in the state of North Carolina and became the Head of the Speech and Hearing Department at the UNC Medical Center. He was Chairman of the Medical Advisory Council for OSHA, and his expertise on  the vestibular system led to frequent work with NASA investigating causes of space sickness. He worked in diving medicine as well, and is listed in Who’s Who in American Science.

 

I did know, however, that he was a generous, hilarious, tolerant, and kind man, and that’s what I remember, more than any accolades.  

 

 

Always cracking me up

He was great at the “Dad” stuff. He sat by my bed when I was sick, taught me to ride a bike and to drive, bought me my first transistor radio and my first album—The Monkees’ Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, and Jones, Ltd. But more than that, he always encouraged me to be independent and to do what I loved. When I decided I wanted to play the guitar, he got me my first inexpensive one, then told me he’d pay for half of the serious, Guild G-37 I really wanted, if I worked for the rest. After I did three hundred hours of babysitting (!), he kept that promise. 

 

Only a great dad would involve himself in this nonsense

 

And when I got my first paying gig at 15, at a pizza joint that served beer, my mother said I was going to hell. Dad came and ran the soundboard. He was like that for my whole life, no matter what I got up to.

 

Before he died, I’d encouraged him to write down at least some of his experiences growing up and, although it is unfinished, the few pages of his memoir, The Boy from Shopton, are precious to me and say a lot about him, and a lot about my grandparents as well. There were a few things I didn’t know, like this.

 

For a while, his nickname was "Flash"

 

“In order to get the job at the A&P, I had to have a Social Security Card. I went to the Records Dept. in Charlotte to get a copy of my birth certificate, but they could not find it. They had a Richard Grady Thomas with the correct parents and birthday, but no William Grady Thomas. As I have indicated earlier, I was born at home. My mother gave our family doctor, Dr. Richard Querry, the name she wanted on the birth certificate. Dr. Querry told my mother that he was going to name this boy after himself. Of course, mother thought he was kidding, but for the first twelve years of my life I was Richard Grady Thomas. It was terribly expensive to have my birth certificate changed, a whopping 50 cents.”

 

And this story says so much:

 

“In March of my sophomore year in high school I turned 16 years of age. My brother-in-law, Hudie Moser, took me to the Driver's License Bureau and I got my driver's license on my birthday. That evening I took the family car out to visit some friends. Neither my mother nor my father asked where I was going or when I would be back. I knew to stay out of trouble and when to return home. As indicated previously, my mother and father tended to teach by example instead of threats.”

 

Last time I saw my Dad, still cracking me up

 

My Dad was the same. He trusted us to follow his example, and that has made all the difference. Families are complicated and these kinds of holidays can bring up feelings we might not welcome or that we stuff down most of the year. Thankfully for me, I’m happy to remember Grady anytime. 

 

--Wendall

The Brain on Conspiracies: Understanding the Neurological Differences Between Believers and Non-Believers

 

Introduction

As the election season is upon us, conspiracy theories are taking on new importance, influencing public opinion and voting behaviors. Conspiracy theories are no longer fringe ideas—they’ve become widespread across social media and public discourse. But what makes certain people more likely to believe in them? Emerging research from neuroscience and psychology suggests there are physiological brain changes in conspiracy believers compared to those who dismiss such theories. 

The Amygdala: The Fear Center of the Brain

The amygdala, an area of the brain associated with processing emotions like fear, plays a significant role in conspiratorial thinking. According to a study in Nature, heightened amygdala activity has been observed in individuals who tend to focus on perceived threats, a core element in many conspiracy theories. This overactivity could explain why conspiracy believers are more prone to anxiety and suspicion, as their brains react more intensely to the idea of danger or deception.

A tiny structure with a big job

The Role of the Prefrontal Cortex

While the amygdala governs emotions, the prefrontal cortex—responsible for higher-order functions like reasoning and decision-making—regulates logical thinking. A study from CellGate reveals that individuals prone to believing in conspiracy theories show reduced prefrontal cortex activity, which may impair their ability to analyze information critically. This diminished activity weakens their capacity to question dubious claims or resist emotionally charged, irrational ideas (Sanfey et al., 2003).

Need for Closure vs. Need for Cognition: Two Personality Types

A recent NPR podcast highlights two psychological profiles that might explain why some people are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. According to research, people needing closure seek certainty and precise answers and tend to feel uncomfortable with ambiguity. Delusion-proneness was associated with a need for closure. This preference makes them more susceptible to black-and-white explanations, a hallmark of many conspiracy theories (Kruglanski & Webster, 1996). Conversely, individuals with a high "need for cognition" are more open to complexity and uncertainty, making them less likely to accept conspiratorial claims at face value.

Election Season and the Rise of Conspiracy Theories

As election season approaches, conspiracy theories become even more prominent. From allegations of election fraud to unfounded claims about political candidates, heightened amygdala activity in conspiracy believers is more easily triggered by politically charged misinformation. According to a report by The Washington Post, rampant misinformation during election periods has a profound impact on voter behavior, with conspiracy believers being particularly vulnerable to manipulation. This makes understanding the brain's role in conspiracy thinking more important than ever during such critical times.

How the Amygdala Influences Conspiratorial Thinking

The heightened activity in the amygdala fuels emotional responses and triggers a greater tendency to perceive the world as threatening. This threat-detection bias makes conspiracy theories—often built around fear and hidden dangers—especially attractive. 

Susceptibility to Conspiracies: A Brain Balance

The balance between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex is crucial for regulating emotional responses and applying rational thought. Emotional reactivity can overwhelm logic when this balance tips toward amygdala-driven fear and suspicion, as in conspiracy believers. A Harvard Medical School study underscores how reduced adolescent prefrontal cortex activity results in impaired reasoning. 

Conclusion

The neurological and psychological differences between conspiracy believers and non-believers provide valuable insights into why some individuals are likelier to fall for misinformation. Studies show heightened amygdala activity, reduced prefrontal cortex function, and personality traits like a high "need for closure" are key factors. As election season amplifies the spread of conspiracies, understanding these brain changes becomes critical for developing strategies to counter misinformation and promote critical thinking.